Duck!

I haven't blogged about all 12 recipes, but April (month 10 of the year of new recipes) is quite an exciting one, and more importantly Dan was around to take photos :)

I love duck, but have never cooked it before. It turned out to be as tricky as I expected. We bought duck breasts (about twice as expensive as chicken for reference) and we started pan frying them, which made the skin lovely and cripsy, and then the recipe said to transfer them to a roasting dish in a pre heated oven. They then cooked much slower than the recipe stated, and I kept checking them. It was hard to know when they done, as you can eat duck a bit rare, but these stayed bloody for ages and then suddenly cooked in 3 minutes!

I have to say, that with the wild rice and a side of chutney they were absolutely lovely. A bit pricy to eat regularly, but good as a treat I think. I shall look out some more duck recipes I think...

Only two more months to on my year of recipes. I want to cook lamb and fish cakes. I can't wait!

Work In Progress

Thanks to the help of my fantastic brother I started work on 4 items on the list last night!

We have our socialising down to a fine art now. I instruct him on when and where to turn up, and what he needs to bring, and what job he will be doing for me and what the reward is!

So last night he dutifully turned up after work and was fed pork with cider and mustard sauce and crushed new potatos which is the first of 12 new recipes I'm going to cook over 12 months (Item 90).

We then headed off to visit our elderly relative, and she was so delighted to see us I was pleased we'd made the effort. (Item 27).

Back at my flat Graham began my guitar lessons. He knows an awful lot and I wish I could remember more of it today, but the thing I do remember is that holding chords down really hurts your fingers! I think this is going to be harder than I anticipated, but it was quite fun, and I hope we do it again soon. I must practise the chords I learnt and see if I can get a bit better at moving from one to another, currently there is a 30 second pause while I say "ummmmm..... oh yes! No... thats not quite right...." which is not good enough! Still good progress for a first attempt I feel! (Item 50)

Graham is also going to keep an eye out for a black and white film for me (Item 48). I had assumed I'd have one to hire on my BT Vision, but it seems I don't, and Graham thinks he can find one in the sale for nearly the same price as rental, so hopefully one will come up soon, I really need to get something else crossed off the list!